On July 20, 2007, Evon Reid was scheduled to work a double shift serving tables at the Milestone’s restaurant in the Scarborough Town Centre. This was the third year the lanky 22-year-old had been working as a waiter to pay for his bachelor’s degree, and he was tired of it. A top-notch U of T political science student with a CV that listed almost a decade of volunteering and community involvement, Reid was ready for a job that would lead to a career in international law or business. That summer morning, he had woken up at 6 a.m. to check on the status of a few job applications, including one for a position he really wanted: media analyst at Queen’s Park.

His excitement spiked when he saw an e-mail in his inbox from Aileen Siu, his contact in the cabinet office. The week before, Siu had left a message with Reid’s mother about his application, and Reid had been trying to get in touch with her since. He hoped that Siu’s e-mail was about scheduling an interview. Instead, he opened it to discover it contained his application and a one-line message—“This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before”—sent from Siu to a cabinet office colleague, and inadvertently cc’d to Reid.

Reid sat at his computer in disbelief, reading the e-mail over and over. “It was a personal insult,” he says. “It was a pretty big swipe. There was a sense of embarrassment. At first, I tried to ignore it. I tried to go back to bed.” Instead, his mind racing, he lay awake in the bedroom of the Malvern home he shares with his mother, Joan Coy, his older sister, Dionne, and his younger brother, L. J. Around 7 a.m., his family began to stir. Reid approached them in their early morning grogginess and told them about the e-mail. He then placed a call to his older brother, Richard, who lives in St. Catharines. A close-knit group, the family was shocked, confused and angry.

“I felt like I got punched in the gut by a sumo wrestler,” says Richard, who is a manager at White Oaks Resort & Spa in Niagara-on-the-Lake. “At first when he told me he was calling about the job, I got excited. Then he forwarded me the e-mail. I had to hang up, read it once again, and absorb it. I called him back and said, ‘I’m on my way to Toronto.’ ” Richard was in his car on the QEW by 8:15 a.m.

The family forwarded the e-mail to friends at various companies who work in human resources. The prevailing opinion was that Reid should approach Siu’s boss. He combed the Internet trying to find an organizational chart of the bureaucratic maze that is Queen’s Park. Friends who worked for the provincial government untangled the chain of command. Reid wasn’t sure what he was going to do, or even what he wanted. He considered deleting the e‑mail and getting on with his life but decided he couldn’t ignore it. Instead of attempting to take on Queen’s Park alone, he went public. He forwarded the e-mail to the Toronto Star. Then he showed up for his noon shift at Milestone’s. By his 3 p.m. break, Star reporter Linda Diebel had called him for an interview. He drove back to his home, spoke to her on the phone, had his photo taken and returned to work. After his second shift ended at 11 p.m., he and Richard went for a beer. “We sat down in a bar and had a quiet talk,” Reid says. “It was kind of like the calm before the storm. I had a feeling that it would be bigger than I was prepared for it to be, that it would spiral.”

Which it did. The first news story appeared in the Star the next day. Siu didn’t have much of a defence beyond the rather obvious fact that the e-mail had been cc’d to Reid by mistake, that she had been “multi-tasking” when she sent it. She pointed out that she didn’t have any knowledge of Reid’s race or ethnicity (Siu likely drew her conclusions from Reid’s address or after hearing his mother’s Jamaican accent on the telephone), and that she’s of Asian descent and doesn’t make racially based judgments. Craig Sumi, Siu’s boss, was also interviewed by Diebel and called the e-mail “totally inappropriate,” labelling Siu “an unclassified, part-time employee…low level.” Sumi left an apology on Reid’s voice mail. Giles Gherson, a former Star editor and current deputy minister of communications in the cabinet office, also phoned Reid and apologized.

The attempts at damage control didn’t cut it. The “ghetto dude incident,” as it came to be known, was all over Toronto’s amateur and professional media, and even found its way onto Reuters international news wire. By that time, PC and NDP MPPs were criticizing Dalton McGuinty for his lack of response. The premier in turn called Reid on July 22 and said he was proud of the young man for going public. In a follow-up story in the Star, Reid said he thought the call was “very thoughtful,” then went on to criticize Sumi’s excuses for the incident. Siu may have been “low level,” but Reid felt that as his only contact at the cabinet office, she was important to him.

Siu was skewered by local bloggers, called everything from a stupid wench to a damn liar. An unfortunate Facebook member also named Aileen Siu found herself besieged by insults and threats after her profile was linked on torontoist.com. More sophisticated discussions introduced class as a factor—whether “ghetto” referred not just to Reid’s race or ethnicity, but also his Malvern address.

One of the hottest points of debate centred around Siu’s suggestion that her own ethnicity excused her from acts of racism. Most commentators disagreed. A joint statement released by the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists cautioned against viewing the incident as one between individuals: “Ms. Siu would not have used the term ‘ghetto dude’ if she did not perceive the work environment to be conducive to anti-African racism.” In a letter published in the Toronto Star on July 23, Victor Wong, the head of the Chinese Canadian National Council, said, “Evon Reid deserves an apology for the remark. But the Ontario government must work harder to deal with the systemic barriers in hiring, retention and promotion.” On the other side of the argument was The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente, who dismissed Wong’s claim of systemic racism. Suggesting that Reid was over-sensitive and attention starved, Wente labelled the e‑mail a “careless remark” and said she was troubled at how low the bar for what’s considered discriminatory speech had dropped.

The media onslaught was mostly in Reid’s favour, and that felt good. Other than coping with the barrage of e-mails, what he found most disconcerting were the notes from people who had no interest in discussing racism but wanted to know whether he was free that weekend. (“On [the] cheery side, that guy is GORGEOUS,” read one blog comment.) “Yeah, I was surprised by that aspect,” he says. “It was like being a female politician.”